but the only reason I would ever actually play any of the 8-bit Mario games on an actual NES–not the NESticle emulator that I still have on my old Windows 98 Compaq Presario with savestates and certainly not Super Mario All-Stars–would be to see the 8-bit graphics. Just to see what they looked like, I have watched clips of the 8-bit Lost Levels on Youtube, particularly to see what the hilarious World 9 looked like.

I just finished The Lost Levels on the original Famicom version. I do not feel any guilt whatsoever about save-state scumming the game to achieve 100 percent completion.

Neither would I–emulators and savestates are, somewhat embarrassingly, the only way I’d be able to play most NES or Genesis games that I’ve played, and even some SNES games, like Zombies Ate My Neighbors which is really impossible to play all the way through without savestates unless you’re an expert who wants to spent about six straight hours in front of a TV screen with your SNES. And which I did play through recently, on ZSNES, and greatly enjoyed it. And which I’m using to get through those old Genesis games right now, as I plan on replaying all seven of the ones I have this year, for the first time in a quarter century or so.
Nor did I feel guilt about saving the game level by level on the actual SNES All-Stars version, nor any guilt about using that little Koopa-repeat-stomp trick in the very first level to give myself 128 lives.

This includes beating the game eight times to unlock the bonus worlds. It is fortunate that Nintendo Switch Online includes rewind functionality, which allows the player to reverse time whenever they die.

Oh. Good lord, I’d never heard about that. The eight times thing I mean. Now I’m imagining Super Ghouls ‘N Ghosts times eight. What a kick in the teeth.

What makes this game unique is that it is essentially a troll game, deliberately designed to frustrate the player and actively induce an Angry Video Game Nerd–style rage, while laughing at the player in the process. Think of all the games AVGN becomes angry at due to incompetence or poor design decisions, and replace that with highly competent designers who are deliberately trying to provoke the same emotional response as a practical joke.

One really does wonder about the programmers behind The Lost Levels. Of course, Americans couldn’t play the game because it was on a floppy disk that you stuck into a little drive that the Famicom had and the NES didn’t, but it would have been deemed too difficult for Americans anyway, right? That’s what I’ve heard. Of course, many NES games are very hard, but that’s usually due to slippery controls, difficult jumps and enemies spawning at the wrong moment. This is that plus the prank mentality.
What gives creedence to it being sort of a crazy prank is that it came out within one year of the original SMB (I’ve read they’re not entirely sure what the actual release date for the original SMB even was, so there’s that too.)

The long-running joke >about Super Mario Bros. 3 being “the Devil’s game” is far more applicable to The Lost Levels, as its designers are consciously cruel to the player. It is the personification of an evil game.

I’ve never heard of SMB3 being called “The Devil’s game.” It’s not that hard!! What would anybody call it that for, besides that nasty World 8 Airships level, or maybe the World 8 Fortress?

What is particularly striking is how the game actively punishes muscle memory and competence developed from the original Super Mario Bros. The player is forced to unlearn what the first game taught them. A simple jump that would succeed every time in the original game now results in hitting an invisible block and falling to one’s death. These invisible blocks are deliberately placed where experienced players instinctively jump, specifically targeting veteran >players rather than newcomers.

Yep. Don’t forget the poison mushrooms, those made me die laughing the first time I saw them.

The original Super Mario Bros. encouraged exploration. Entering a green pipe often led to a hidden sub-level filled with bonus coins, teaching players to investigate every pipe for secrets. In The Lost Levels, the player jumps down a pipe expecting to enter it, only to find that it leads nowhere. When they >attempt to escape, they hit two invisible blocks and die by a Piranha plant popping out. This philosophy extends throughout the game through the infamous poison mushroom, backward warp pipes, and wind physics that disrupt familiar jump timing.

Ah, there’s the poison mushrooms! I liked the nasty wind stuff, that was a cool idea.

There are trampoline levels where Mario is launched off-screen, forcing the player to estimate where they will land with no visual reference, which feels fundamentally unfair.

I love those levels.

Other trampolines have altered physics and fail to provide the expected height, requiring extremely precise timing to clear jumps. Some sections are impossible to complete as Big Mario, forcing the player to intentionally take damage and proceed as Small Mario. Later levels demand pixel-perfect landings on >single blocks or precise timing to chain jumps across multiple Paratroopas.

My pick for the nastiest moment in the game is anything from about the 30-second mark on in this clip, those Bullet Bills always seemed to be gunning for me right when I jumped:

One particularly egregious example involves a running jump to land on a green pipe that is completely off screen. Upon landing, a Piranha Plant immediately emerges, guaranteeing damage. The only way to survive is to slowly inch toward the ledge to scroll the camera until the pipe becomes visible, then time the >jump so the Piranha Plant is retracted. This solution is impossible to discover without dying first.

What level is this? Post it for me, I can’t remember.

Even if the player is skilled enough to complete the game, they are then required to beat it eight times to unlock Worlds A through D. This requirement was mercifully removed in Super Mario All-Stars. It is easy to imagine the Angry Video Game Nerd’s jaw dropping when, after immense frustration in completing the >game, he realises he must do it seven more times.

Yeah, I don’t know that his criticisms would be more valid for this game than they would be for Kid Icarus, Metroid or Majora’s Mask, to name three games he trashed that I liked.

Is this a bad game? In its original form, I think the answer is yes. In an era limited to three lives and no save system, death meant restarting from the beginning. The game contains unavoidable death traps that cannot be survived on a first playthrough and require memorisation to progress. Being killed by an >unavoidable trap and sent back to the early levels is already punishing enough. Requiring the entire game to be completed eight times in a single uninterrupted play history to access bonus worlds, which are themselves brutally difficult, is pure sadism.

Yeah, all the more reason to be grateful for Mario All-Stars. I think my happiest childhood memory is when that game came out.

I cannot imagine anyone achieving full completion on the original Famicom without leaving the console powered on for weeks, repeatedly practising without ever turning the system off, as doing so would reset the completion counter.

I guess it’d be as bad or worse than beating Battletoads, or (this is an example I’ve always thought of) being the people who somehow made it all the way through Zelda II in 1988, before there were even maps in Nintendo Power. Seriously, those caves and that final dungeon are just beastly.

In fact, it is difficult to even consider The Lost Levels a conventional game. Gameplay does not feel like the primary purpose of its existence. Instead, it functions as a sophisticated prank. One can easily imagine the developers designing this game, watching focus-group playtesters fall into trap after trap, and laughing at their suffering. It is easy to picture an evil, demonic Mario taunting the Angry Video Game Nerd as he repeatedly dies.
However, in the modern era of save states and rewind features provided by emulation or Nintendo Switch Online, many of these complaints lose their severity. I would actually recommend players experience The Lost Levels, not as a traditional video game, but as an artistic statement. It may be one of the most >artistically interesting Mario games ever made.

Well…I’m on the fence about whether the “sophisticated prank” thing renders the game un-fun. I love The Lost Levels and have played through it five or six times since 1993 and in its SNES form, I think it’s a lot of fun even WITH the difficulty. Buuuuut…that’s the SNES version.

Most Mario games prioritise fun through refined gameplay mechanics. While some argue that the Galaxy games introduce atmosphere and narrative depth, these claims are somewhat overstated. The atmosphere and story may be advanced for a Mario title, but they remain superficial by broader video game standards. The Lost Levels, by contrast, presents a uniquely original artistic statement within the medium.

Through this lens, The Lost Levels may have evolved into one of the most original and compelling experiences in video game history. It may be an awful game in traditional terms, but it is also one of the medium’s great artistic experiments. There are many games out there that are hard, but The Lost Levels is unique in the fact that it is hard by subverting expectations and deceiving the players which is the video game equivalent of slapstick comedy with the player the target of the humour. One can even see how it directly paved the way for Mario ROM hacks and Mario Maker troll levels, where sadistic design is no longer >accidental but celebrated.

Right, yeah. It’s nowhere near as frustrating as it must be to actually play “Asshole Mario” like that guy did on Youtube (the one that just immediately drops you into a pit) all those years ago.